Dear LwCers,
Let's make the most of these animation applications or movie makers. They will surely provide a way to stretch our students' imagination, creativity and writing skills, plus the excitement of having a real and international audience for their films.
Find a short description of some of the main characteristics of each site below and see which the most suitable for your class is.
Zimmer Twins
http://www.zimmertwins.com/
Based on a popular Canadian Cartoon.
Requires short registration and a password, which is sent to your e-mail account.
Target audience: Kids – pre-teens
Tool Editor : Animation Clips: talk bubbles, action, close-up, star.
Sentence close- up (ss. use the language even to edit action scenes), Timeline. (See: "How to make a movie" clip)
Characters : only the cartoon characters : the twins, Eva and Edgar and 13 (the cat).
Special features :
· Some movies are shown (good to give ss. an idea of what a movie would be like).
· Optional movie starters! Ss. can continue the story.
· Comments to each movie can be submitted.
· There are special guidelines on the expected behavior of members. The Flag feature is provided to notify the administrators of unproper behavior shown either in the comments section or the movie itself.
DFilm
http://www.dfilm.com/index_moviemaker.html
http://www.dfilm.com/index_about.html
No registration needed.
Target audience: older teenagers, young adults
Tool editor : features : background, sky, plot (i.e. character interaction), characters (2), text, background music, presentation.
Characters : wider variety : 32 (including animals, creatures and some famous people) some traits and information about each one provided.
· Possibility of submitting your own character!? (templates provided)
Special features :
· Can be sent by mail.
Would you add any other characteristics?
Note: I've e-mailed the producer, Bart Cheever, asking for a comment feature and the possibility of watching other people's films (a movie archive). Let's see what happens!
Now, it's our job to decide how to introduce this fascinating project to our students.
Group work? Script drafting? A topic for the whole class (or festival) or individual topics?
Let's pool ideas. The process has started!!
14 comments:
Dear An,
Welcome aboard!
Enjoy your winter holidays! I'm just finishing mine here :( And we live in the same country!?
Keep in touch!
Carla R.
Dear Carla,
It's a great idea! And I'm glad you created this blog to converge the conversation.
Well, as you mentioned, I guess we need to define the age range, the topic, and the schedule for the project.
My classes start next week and I could certainly motivate my students to become movie makers!!!
Carla
Hi Carla,
Thank you for the links and information about the various film making tools. I've never tried this, but I'm eager to. I won't be starting classes until mid-September. Making a movie would be a motivating task for our langauge learners!
Mary
Hi Carla,
Like I told you these movies are just great. I think your idea of organizing information in this fashion was really nice. I just can´t wait to start the semester and use some of these features with my students. I could create a story related to the reading activity we have.
Cheers
J. Antônio
Dear Carla, Mary and Juan Antonio,
Thanks for joining us!
As regards age, I think we should include a category for each age group: Kids (up to 11?) Teenagers (up to 17?) and Adults.
Then, within Teenagers and Adults there should be sub-categories according to their language level. (Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced) What do you think?
As regards the schedule, I’m also starting 2nd semester next week, but some of you are starting the class year in September. Would December be a suitable deadline for everybody?
And the topic… well, in order to integrate the project naturally into the course syllabus each teacher could decide to relate it to the topics/books/readers she/he’s dealing with in class. However, we could also agree on a common theme such as, Friendship across boundaries, that would also allow ss. compare how different cultures feel and express their ideas.
These are just some ideas, I really look forward to your suggestions.
Carla R.
This is a great idea!!!
I'll begin a new course in October,and I'd like to try this movie making with my students. They're going to be (if I'm not wrong) EFL teacher trainees in their first term out of ten, with an intermediate level of English,from 17 yrs old upward (no limit)The topic might be Our country, then share with other students from different countries.I hope we have a better connection in the lab,so we can devote some class time doing this. My experience with blogs tells me that assigning web tasks for out of class doesn't work very well. They never have time.
Nahir
Carla,
I am just gob-stopped at the speed with which you created this well-dsigned, informative blog.
One suggestion (for the kids' sake). Mustn't we make it clear that we are talking about animation movies here, not films shot with a camera? Or have I misunderstood?
Dennis
Dear Nahir,
I'm also planning to work on the project at the lab. I think this is an excellent activity for group or pair work.
Thanks for joining us!
Hope to hear from you soon!
Carla R.
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for your comment! I guess you are right. Do you think we should change the project name to LwC Animation Movie Festival or Digital Animation Festival? Which one do you like better?
As regards the speed, the answer is : passion, enthusiasm and motivation!
I hope we can inspire our students as well!
What levels do you teach?
Keep in touch,
Carla
Carla,
I´ve just posted an introduction of a group of students who is going to participate in the festival. Now, questions: 1-Are we going to have a common topic or can we link it to the topics we´ve been dealing in class? 2- Are we going to edit mistakes or leave it as they create? 3- And the deadline, we finish our semester by the second week of December, so do we have a date?
Anxious for getting started,
anamaria
Hello Anamaria,
Thanks a lot for the wonderful presentation and for your enthusiasm!!
As regards your questions, feel free to work the way you think will be best for your students. So far, our students have chosen their own topics. When working with DFilm, I've asked students to write the script on a separate sheet of paper so that I could check it and help them with mistkes. Even so, they still made some mistakes when they typed the dialog, so don't worry for accidental slips.
As for the date, we finish our classes by the end of November, so we could set the deadline by the end of October so that they have time to watch the movies and interact a bit. What do you all think??
Let me know if this is Ok with you.
Best regards,
Carla R
Hello Anamaria,
Thanks a lot for the wonderful presentation and for your enthusiasm!!
As regards your questions, feel free to work the way you think will be best for your students. So far, our students have chosen their own topics. When working with DFilm, I've asked students to write the script on a separate sheet of paper so that I could check it and help them with mistkes. Even so, they still made some mistakes when they typed the dialog, so don't worry for accidental slips.
As for the date, we finish our classes by the end of November, so we could set the deadline by the end of October so that they have time to watch the movies and interact a bit. What do you all think??
Let me know if this is Ok with you.
Best regards,
Carla R
Dear Carla,
I´ll try to get the films ready by the 5th November, is it ok? And I thought of making a post with links to students´ films where people would vote for the best one in the comments area. Was that what you were imagining? Let me know if you have a different idea. We´re really anxious to see the films other students have been making.
That's perfect Anamaría! As to posting the links, that's exactly what I had in mind and what, in fact, we have been doing at the lab!
We'll post our movies by November 5th as well!
Carla
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